The Malik Report

Detroit, MI… For the second consecutive year the Detroit Red Wings will be asking fans to help determine which players will be featured in their season-long bobblehead giveaway promotion in 2012-13. Following the success of last summer’s Operation: Bobblehead voting campaign, which saw nearly two millions ballots cast in selecting the current members of the roster to be immortalized in the form of a collectible bobblehead, this year the team will be asking citizens of Hockeytown to vote on which former Red Wings greats they’d most like to see the likeness of emblazoned upon a 6 ½ inch polyresin figurine.

A total of six players will be featured in the 2012-13 Operation Bobblehead - Alumni Edition. The exact games at which 7,500 bobbleheads will be distributed this season will be announced at a later date.

In theory, anyway, I’m supposed to be on vacation, but after a day spent mostly doing what one does after a long trip preceded by a longer couple of weeks—sleeping—I woke up and found that Alex Kovalevich wanted me to check out some rumors he’d found and posted on Red Wings Grinder, his blog.

So I looked immediately to something I have limited access to this week in Twitter, checking out the ever-helpful RedWingsFeed and what people had been asking me (go figure, over 3,500 people put up with my Tweets) to see what was up.

Paul already posted Red Wings GM Ken Holland’s take on collective bargaining agreement negotiations in a conversation Holland had with the Vernon Morning Star’s Kevin Mitchell , and here’s his take on helping the Wings navigate a difficult transition period (sorry for the sloppy cutting and pasting of text—I’m writing this from my phone):

Looking at the Red Wings’ summer development camp in the rearview mirror, I find it somewhat ironic that news regarding the surprisingly large Jake De Haas’s trade to the BCHL’s Penticton Vees popped up on Friday, and that the Free Press’s George Sipple profiled Andreas Athanasiou today, because the pair of prospects almost prompted a delayed reaction in terms of the impressions the pair left upon me.

I’m heading on vacation for a week today, and as such, my availability will be limited for the vast majority of the next week. I’m heading to the U.P. and a location where internet access extends to a “clubhouse” but not the cabin I’ll be staying in—I will kinda sorta be on vacation—so if anything big breaks, Paul will cover it here, but I’ll only checking in a couple of times a day. I’ll return on Saturday, August 4th and will take things a bit slow due to the time of year (here’s hoping that it’s not too quiet). Before I embark on a 400-mile drive with the mom:

As you might expect in late July, the news cycle is a feast-or-famine one, and we begin with St. Louis Blues coach Ken Hitchcock’s assessment of the state of the Red Wings in a discussion of the Blues’ Central Division rivals, held with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Jeremy Rutherford:

Via RedWingsFeed, I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but involves a member of the Red Wings and what is sure to be an incredibly difficult time for him. From the Denver Post’s Terry Frei:

Finally scheduled to begin on Sept. 24 in Ontario, the trial in the lawsuit of former Avalanche forward Steve Moore against Todd Bertuzzi, the Vancouver Canucks and Marc Crawford now has been “adjourned” to Jan. 28, 2013.

The defense requested and was granted the latest delay. It’s unclear how Bertuzzi’s still-playing status with the Detroit Red Wings would be handled, but I’m assuming it wouldn’t be shocking if it were pushed back again, to after the season.

After both MLive’s Ansar Khan and the Macomb Daily’s Chuck Pleiness confirmed Aaron Ward’s Tweet that the Red Wings had bowed out of the Shane Doan sweepstakes, and after the Globe and Mail’s David Shoalts reported that Doan’s camp wants a 4-year, $30 million contract for a 35-year-old with hard miles on his odometer—a contract which would remain on a team’s payroll even if Doan retired early…

Given my personal schedule for the day (running errands and packing for tomorrow’s trip “up north” for a week), and perhaps for all of our nerves’ sake after the no Semin/no Doan bummerfest that was Thursday, today’s crop of Red Wings news is relatively sparse and spartan—at least by this incredibly busy July news cycle’s standards (knock on wood).

• Well, okay, we’re not out of the Semin/Doan woods yet, via RedWingsFeed:

Shane Doan wants $30-million over four years if he leaves Phoenix Coyotes, source says. That will scare off more than Detroit Red Wings.

The fact that new Grand Rapids Griffins coach Jeff Blashill didn’t attend the Red Wings’ summer development camp raised some eyebrows among Wings fans, but I tried to tread very gently in that area because I knew what was happening: Blashill’s 2-year-old son, Owen, was slated to have surgery to repair a hole in his heart at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, and it was one of those rare situations where the best thing you can do to respect someone’s family is to respect their privacy. According to the Grand Rapids Press’s Peter J. Wallner, all went well:

“There was some stress, some unknown that goes along with it,” he said. “But when you go through something like this, you’re very thankful to be part of an organization that has the perspective that family comes first.”

Blashill, during his June 28 introduction, spoke of the family-orientated atmosphere of the Detroit organization, and thanked his family – wife Erica, Owen and other children Teddy, who’s 6 and Josie, who’s 4 – for their understanding.

“Without their total commitment to hockey and to this lifestyle, I certainly wouldn’t be standing here today,” he said.

Updated with more “overnight report” type stuff at 4:44 AM: On a tumultuous day for Red Wings’ fans collective and individual emotional well-being, I’d usually stuff this into an overnight report, but we might as well shake the bad news out of the bad news tree while it’s giving: MLive’s Ansar Khan reports that Aaron Ward’s suggestion that the Red Wings have chosen to step out of the bidding for Shane Doan is indeed true, but it’s true for the right reason:

An acute and consistent case of CBA insanity preying upon the minds of general managers and owners who seem to believe that they can spend as much as they want for the few top-flight free agents out there because they’ll claw a quarter of it back from the players (as Pro Hockey Talk’s James O’Brien noted, Jim Rutherford dropped $7 million on Alex Semin after sitting in on CBA negotiations).

About The Malik Report

The Malik Report is a destination for all things Red Wings-related. I offer biased, perhaps unprofessional-at-times and verbose coverage of my favorite team, their prospects and developmental affiliates. I've joined the Kukla's Korner family with five years of blogging under my belt, and I hope you'll find almost everything you need to follow your Red Wings at a place where all opinions are created equal and we're all friends, talking about hockey and the team we love to follow.